Short Communication Occurrence of Borrelia lusitaniae infection in horses Fabrizia Veronesi a,1, *, Fulvio Laus b,1 , Fabrizio Passamonti c , Beniamino Tesei b , Daniela Piergili Fioretti a , Claudio Genchi d a Department of Biopathological and Hygiene of Animal and Food Productions, Section of Parasitology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Perugia, Italy b School of Veterinary Medical Sciences, University of Camerino, Italy c Department of Veterinary Pathology, Diagnostic and Clinics, Section of Experimental Science and Applied Biotechnologies, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Perugia, Italy d Department of Veterinary Science and Public Health, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Milan, Italy 1. Introduction In Europe, Borrelia infections are caused by several species belonging to the Borrelia burgdorferi sensu latu (s.l.) complex, usually transmitted by the hard tick Ixodes ricinus. Of the 18 known Borrelia genospecies, the most frequently found in Europe are B. afzelii, B. garinii, B. valaisiana and B. lusitaniae (Collares-Pereira et al., 2004). Hard ticks can become infected at any stage of the life cycle, feeding on reservoir hosts such as rodents, insecti- vores, raccoons and several bird species, and can then transmit the infection to human and domestic animals including dogs, cats, cattle, sheep and horses (Rizzoli et al., 2011). In Italy, Borrelia infection was first reported in 1983 in Liguria (Crovato et al., 1984); since then, several reports have evidenced the presence of the infection in various animal hosts and in humans living mainly in Alpine and Appenine areas (Ciceroni and Ciarrocchi, 1998; Cinco et al., 2004), however data on Borrelia infection in horses is still lacking. B. burgdorferi s.l. seropositivity has been detected worldwide in horses and ponies exhibiting a variety of clinical manifestations and, due to the lack of pathognomic clinical signs (Johnson et al., 2008), serology has become a helpful and widely used tool in diagnostic and epidemio- logical surveys of equine borreliosis (Butler et al., 2005). To date, different serodiagnostic techniques, including indirect fluorescent antibody assay (IFAT), enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), enzyme linked protein A or G assay (ELPAGA) coupled with confirmatory Western blot (WB), are the main immunodiagnostic approaches carried out by veterinary diagnostic laboratories (Butler et al., 2005; Rizzoli et al., 2011). Other tests aimed at detecting Veterinary Microbiology 160 (2012) 535–538 A R T I C L E I N F O Article history: Received 24 April 2012 Received in revised form 20 June 2012 Accepted 20 June 2012 Keywords: Borrelia burgdorferi s.l. Borrelia lusitaniae Serology PCR Horse Italy A B S T R A C T The aim of the study was to investigate Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato (s.l.) infection in horses exposed to heavy tick infestations. Blood samples of 98 healthy horses from 5 stud farms were examined by SNAP 1 4DÂ and PCR to detect antibodies against B. burgdorferi s.l. and Borrelia DNA, respectively. Ten samples (15.3%) were antibody positive and 5 samples (5.1%) were both antibody and PCR positive. Sequence analysis showed the highest homology with the B. lusitaniae genospecies. No differences were found between sexes and stud farms, while age was significantly related to seropositivity (p < 0.05). Our data confirms the presence of B. lusitaniae infection in horses, previously not clearly demonstrated. ß 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. * Corresponding author at: Department of Biopathological and Hygiene of Animal and Food Productions, Section of Parasitology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Perugia, San Costanzo 4 Street, Postal Box 06126, Italy. Tel.: +39 075 5857740; fax: +39 075 5857743. E-mail address: fabrizia.veronesi@unipg.it (F. Veronesi). 1 These authors contributed equally to the work. Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Veterinary Microbiology jo u rn al ho m epag e: ww w.els evier.c o m/lo cat e/vetmic 0378-1135/$ – see front matter ß 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.vetmic.2012.06.029